Coffee Beans to Power Buses in the Capital

A new biofuel scheme is now using waste coffee grounds to help provide power to some of London’s buses.

The scheme - which has been used to power a number of London’s buses since mid-November - was initiated by Transport for London (TfL) in an attempt to cut transport emissions in the capital.

To make the biofuel, oil extracted from coffee waste is combined with diesel. This is then added to the public transport fuel supply, with the buses requiring no modification to use the new fuel.

Technology company bio-bean has now generated enough coffee oil from coffee grounds taken from cafes and instant coffee factories to fuel one bus for 12 months; requiring 2.55 million cups of coffee.

While this is the first time fuel has been produced using coffee waste - making use of the 55 million coffees drunk in Britain each day - it’s not the first time TfL has made use of biofuel to power its buses.

The local government body has already used fuel derived from waste products like cooking oil to power the capital’s fleet of buses, as well as tallow from meat processing.